Electromagnetism news

At http://malagabay.wordpress.com/2013/12/07/cosmic-ray-blues-the-bloody-moon/ ... we have another cracker by Tim Cullen. . A lunar eclipse provides Earth dwellers with a view of an orangey red Moon that provides mainstream consensus science with a chance to show off - and they do as they blame it all on refracted light once again - together with the amount of dust that might have collected in the atmosphere. Malaga Bay outright says this is a fiction - bet you had not thought so. He then takes us on a trip around the magnetosphere of the Earth and the magnetotail in particular.

At http://cosmo.nyu.edu/~rj486/files/RJansson_PhD_thesis.pdf ... the magnetic field of the Milky Way. Each star in the Milky Way has its own magnetic field - like our Sun. Objects that orbit stars also have their own magnetic field - including the Earth. It is reasonable to assume each galaxy has its own magnetic field - but what is the strength of it?

At http://phys.org/print301901189.html ... why is comet ISON green? Green is a sign that the comet if becoming more active as it comes closer to the Sun. The green colour comes from its gases - which may include cyanogen (poisonous) and diatonic carbon (C2).

At http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/10/23/new-paper-finds-solar-uv-varie... ... Dr Sandip Dhomse of the University of Leeds has a paper published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics that notes solar UV radiation can vary by as much as 100 per cent during solar cycles. Such wide changes in UV signifcantly affect stratospheric ozone production and thereby act as a solar amplification mechanism on temperature.

At http://phys.org/print301210854.html ... the Sun's magnetic field is a churning and undulating cycle as it reaches solar maximum - it then flips. Solar maximum comes roughly every 11 years when it reverse polarity, typically creating a larger number of sun spots, aurora, and geomagnetic storms. In this view, sun spots are magnetic fields emanating from the Sun - but others might disagree about what causes them.

Fred Hoyle, in one of his books, Ice I think, made a connection with scree formation and lightning, and thought it unlikely that frost action alone could have created all those broken rocks commonly found on the summit and in big heaps spilling down the sides of mountains in upland areas of Britain, such as the Lake District and the Peak District. It seems this point of view has now been vindicated in a new study that took place in the Drakonsberg Mountains of southern Africa - where frost action is not so obvious.

In 1251 lightning is said to have destroyed the bedchamber of the queen at Windsor and shook the whole house. In the nearby Windsor Forest thirty five trees were split asunder (Matthew Paris, Historia Anglorum). Lightning struck this year too, striking houses and setting them abaze (Weather Eye, The Times). For example, in Wakefield lightning hit a chimney, passed into the loft and then travelled through the central heating system and set the house on fire.